You need this book in your life, right now, this instant. Steve Braunias recommends a New Zealand classic. Finally a guidebook that takes you somewhere you want to go, like right now, as the country trembles under a cold snap and is dying for some warmth. Sally Jackson is the author of a new edition … Read more
To mark a new edition (new preface and everything!) of the 2014 best-seller The Scene of the Crime by Steve Braunias, we present an extract from the chapter which entwines Rolf Harris and Julian Assange. Unable to think of anywhere I’d rather be during a few days to kill in London, I got the last vacant seat in … Read more
Steve Braunias interviews literary sensation Ashleigh Young, who won the award for best book of non-fiction at last night’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Feature image courtesy of Fergus Barrowman. Ashleigh Young was sitting at her Wellington home on the couch last Thursday evening with her cat Jerry (“He’s looking at me a bit disconsolately. Now … Read more
Steve Braunias reports live from the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. An elderly man fell over, and a young woman who was unable to get to the bathroom in time had to vomit in her handbag. Business as usual, then, at the Ockham New Zealand book awards held this evening at the Aotea Centre. It … Read more
Victoria University Press is nominated for just about everything at tonight’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. How come? Is it a good thing? Or is it a depressing commentary on the sorry little state of New Zealand literature? VUP publisher Fergus Barrowman steps up for the revolutionary live email interview. And the winner is Fergus Barrowman. The … Read more
The latest book by Steve Braunias is based on his Herald series about eating everything on sight on Lincoln Rd. In this excerpt from the prologue, he goes behind the scenes to reveal his desperate campaign to get it published. One day destiny came calling, and I picked up. For years I had been travelling along Lincoln Rd and wondering … Read more
All week this week we look at the life and writing of Greymouth novelist and poet Peter Hooper (1919-91). Today: a West Coast memoir by Steve Braunias. I was only passing through the West Coast, lived in Greymouth for not much more than a year, packed a picnic lunch and a copy of the newly … Read more
Don Henley from the Eagles played a gig at the Vector Arena in Auckland on Thursday night. Steve Braunias was there, and he reviewed it in a single paragraph tapped out on a bus trip today. As soon as Don Henley started playing Hotel California in the encore of his show on Thursday night at … Read more
A lawyer has run amok at the Auckland Art Gallery at the launch of the Auckland Writers Festival. The Spinoff Review of Books was there. A glass of red wine was spilled on a guest wearing an A-line Trelise Cooper pattern dress, quite ruining it, at tonight’s launch of the Auckland Writers Festival at the Auckland … Read more
Yet another Spinoff Review of Books exclusive as we break the 6:00am embargo by 60 seconds and present, as of 5:59am, the shortlist of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards featuring Ashleigh Young. Ashleigh Young and some other writers have made it onto the shortlist of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Young, 33, the … Read more
Steve Braunias conducts the live email interview – the revolutionary journalistic practise trailblazed by the Spinoff Review of Books – with author and academic Scott Hamilton to conclude our week-long series on Hamilton’s terrific new book The Stolen Island. Scott Hamilton is a literary outsider, a maverick, a public intellectual without much of a public … Read more
In which the Spinoff Review of Books reveals the New Zealand writer who has won a Major International Prize. It’s Ashleigh Young, but you might have guessed that because her name is in the headline. Wellington writer Ashleigh Young has won $US165,000 in a major US literary prize. The author of two critically acclaimed books – Magnificent … Read more
We give reviews and literary things like that a rest today and play a meme instead. Norman Ohler’s new book Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, an investigation into widespread drug abuse in Hitler’s Third Reich, has been an international best-seller – including New Zealand, where the book shot to the number one spot on the … Read more
All week this week Spinoff Review of Books editor Steve Braunias recommends the very best, A-grade quality, guaranteed good books for Christmas. Today: The Shops, by Spinoff Review of Books editor Steve Braunias, in collaboration with photographer Peter Black. Here to promote it by way of a contentious essay is Spinoff Review of Books editor … Read more
New Zealand literature! What is it, who reads it, and why does it exist? Some or none or all of these questions are about to be answered in the first annual Spinoff Review of Books literary awards!!! Some say 2016 will go down in history as the year between 2015 and 2017, but it’s too early … Read more
Steve Braunias conducts the live email interview – the revolutionary journalistic practise trailblazed exclusively by the Spinoff Review of Books – with journalist and author Adam Dudding. Feature image credit: Noah Ferguson-Dudding. Adam Dudding is a feature journalist with the Sunday Star-Times, and his first book My Father’s Island was longlisted on Tuesday morning for … Read more
Steve Braunias finally gets around to writing about the event he got sent to cover by Wellington Tourism – LitCrawl, which kind of got overshadowed by this thing that happened on a Sunday night. I was all set to write about Wellington’s very lively and audaciously staged LitCrawl live-event literary extravaganza last Monday, but the … Read more
The place: Cuba Street, downtown Wellington. The time: approximately midnight Sunday. Lloyd Jones is a writer and farmer, a strongly built fellow, a little bigger than I am, but I sized him up with a view to kicking his fat ass late on Sunday night in the lobby of our hotel in Cuba St, downtown … Read more
Good news for four New Zealand writers, as exclusively revealed by the Spinoff Review of Books. Yeah, yeah, so the Man Booker prize was announced last week and some guy won it, but who cares bro! His book looks stink. It is with excitement that the Spinoff Review of Books can exclusively reveal that this … Read more
David Cunliffe has announced he is leaving politics. He was once the Rising Man; in October 2007, in the age before Key, Helen Clark promoted him as health minister. Steve Braunias profiled him for the Sunday Star-Times. You could tell at once what was going to happen when an old couple approached newly promoted cabinet … Read more
Steve Braunias writes about Lucky, the unlucky dog of Mercer, in a new anthology of writing about dogs – dogs as pets, dogs as farm animals, dogs as meals, and other kinds of mutts. The graveyard was across the road from the school, and over the fence from a three-bedroom house on the edge of … Read more
One of the year’s best books is End of Watch, by the great master of readable fiction, Stephen King. Steve Braunias recalls an appointment with the author in London. Then there was the time I saw a ghost. It was Stephen King. It happened 10 years ago, in London, at this time of year – … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews a peculiar new book by a living legend of American journalism. This is the way the publishing career ends for one of the great innovators of literary journalism: not with a whimper, but a bang, the story blowing up in his face. American writer Gay Talese’s latest book – and maybe his … Read more
To mark the publication of a stunning collection of black and white photographs taken of a West Coast ghost town, Steve Braunias posts a Sunday Star-Times column he wrote about the place in June 2006. The old always seem to be up and about early, so I phoned Bill Gidley, 88, at his home in … Read more
To mark National Poetry Day, Steve Braunias reveals his correspondence with one of the world’s most celebrated poets. A few weeks ago I thought: hm I know, let’s see if any of the world’s most well-known living poets will write a poem for the Spinoff Review of Books. I drew up a list and got in … Read more
Steve Braunias runs deep surveillance on the judges of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Here come de judge! A dozen of them, as the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards today announces the “12 eminent academics, writers, journalists, librarians, curators, commentators and booksellers” who will judge next year’s awards. Writers who are eligible … Read more
Steve Braunias leads a special Spinoff investigation into fresh claims that 1971 was the greatest year in music ever. David Hepworth makes the fairly audacious but sustained and kind of also really persuasive argument in his new book 1971: Never A Dull Moment that 1971 was the greatest year in the history of popular music. … Read more
Steve Braunias marks the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s farewell from the White House. Trump, so hysterical and dangerous, can almost make that other, earlier Republican sonofabitch Nixon look good. Almost, but not quite. Today is another anniversary of that happy day on August 9, 1974, when Nixon left office, skipped town, rode out on Chopper … Read more
Steve Braunias reports live from the children’s book awards held tonight at Circa Theatre in Wellington. All the winners! All the drunks! A who’s who of New Zealand children’s literature – Stacy Gregg! Patricia Grace! Jane Bloomfield! Wassisname! – gathered tonight at Circa Theatre, that old shack beside a dismal pond on Wellington’s waterfront, for … Read more